RALEIGH, N.C. - When NC State and Wake Forest meet on Tuesday night in Winston-Salem, the Wolfpack will square off against one of its oldest rivals. It will mark the 236th meeting in the rivalry, which is tied with Duke for the most games NC State has played against one school.

Most recently, the Wolfpack (15-3 overall, 4-1 ACC) has won five straight against Wake Forest, its longest streak in the series since Jim Valvano led the Pack to six straight wins from 1985-87. Legendary NC State head coach Everett Case twice had 10-game winning streaks over the Deacons, from 1949-52 and from 1954-57.

If the Wolfpack were to post its sixth consecutive victory over Demon Deacons, it would be off to its best start after 19 games since the 1975-76 team began the year with a 16-3 mark.

In last year's meeting between the two schools in Winston-Salem, State posted a 76-40 victory. The 36-point margin of victory was the second largest road win by the Wolfpack since it defeated Clemson by 40 (112-72) in 1954. Lorenzo Brown led the State charge with 20 points with C.J. Williams adding 15 and Scott Wood contributing 12.

The two teams have met at least twice a year since 1944, when World War II interrupted the rivalry for one season. Since that first game in 1911, the only seasons the teams haven't met at least twice were in 1914-15 when no game was played, 1929-30 when only one game was played and 1943-44 when no game was played.

The two programs first met for a home-and-home series in February of 1911, when Wake Forest was still located in the town 20 miles from the NC State campus, then known as the North Carolina School for Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. The two schools split their initial meetings with each winning on their home courts.

There are several ties that bind the two programs together. Red Crozier, who agreed to face the upstart A&M program for its first two games, became NC State College's coach following World War I (1920-22).

Later former NC State player Horace "Bones" McKinney became the head basketball coach at Wake Forest, taking the Demon Deacons to back-to-back ACC titles in 1961 and '62 and the 1962 NCAA Final Four.

Case, who brought big-time basketball to the South from Indiana, had a lively relationship with McKinney. He coached his final game, an 86-80 loss, against McKinney and the Demon Deacons on Dec. 5, 1964, in Winston-Salem. After the game, the cancer-stricken Case announced that he could not finish the season and handed the reins over to his hand-picked successor, Press Maravich, who led the Wolfpack to the 1965 ACC title at Reynolds Coliseum.

Wake Forest came to Reynolds Coliseum on March 5, 1983, and scored 89 points on Jim Valvano's Wolfpack - and lost by an astounding 41 points in an ACC contest. That 130-89 decision is still one of the highest scoring games in ACC history. Five days later the two teams met again in the ACC Tournament in Atlanta, and the Wolfpack won by one point, 71-70, as sophomore Lorenzo Charles made one of two free throws in the final seconds.

NC State and Wake Forest have also met in the two longest games in ACC history. In final game of the 1989 season, a Rodney Monroe jumper off a missed free throw by Kelsey Weems led to a four-overtime classic with the Pack prevailing 110-103 with Monroe scoring 26 points. The win assured the Wolfpack of first place in the final ACC standings and gave Valvano's team the top seed at the 1989 ACC Tournament.

The longest game played in conference history was one that started on Dec.11, 1965, at Memorial Coliseum on the Wake campus. With Pack leading 23-13 midway through the first half, a fire broke out, forcing both teams and spectators to evacuate. The game didn't resume until 74 days later, on Feb. 23, 1966, when the Wolfpack traveled back to Winston-Salem to finish the contest with a 101-75 victory, concluding the longest game in league history.

With the ACC's new scheduling format, NC State will continue this tradition-rich rivalry with two meetings a season for many years to come.